“Henry Willis, Miniature Painter.”
In a moment the door opened, disclosing within the studio of an artist, the artist himself, a fine looking youth, with dark hair and slight mustache, and dressed in his painter’s blouse, while in the back-ground could be seen a prim, stiff old lady in high cap and curls, steadily and rigidly sitting for her portrait.
At sight of the new comer the artist’s countenance became bright with love and pleasure, and the exclamation “dearest!” that almost involuntarily escaped him, told that they were no strangers to each other. The young lady, on the other hand, perceiving the sitter through the half-opened door, glided back a step or two, so as to be unperceived by the latter, and taking from her reticule a folded paper, she held it out to the painter, accompanying the act with these words—“A message for you, Henry; it would have been pleasanter, perhaps, to have delivered it verbally, but you see I have been prepared for any emergency.” So saying, she delivered the paper—received a kiss upon her little gloved hand—smiled—said, “good morning!” and gracefully glided back into the street.
The artist re-entered his studio—found some excuse to dismiss the stiff old lady, and was soon buried, with beaming face and beating heart, in the contents of the paper he had just received.
He rose from its perusal like a man mad—mad from excess of joy—mad from love; and hastily striding up and down his small studio, he exclaimed, “Yes, dearest heart! any thing—any thing you wish shall be done. One week, and she shall be mine; and such a mischievous trick—but the fool deserves it, richly deserves it, for aspiring to the hand of one so immeasurably his superior. Ninny! he little knew how deeply she has loved, sweet girl! How she has deceived them—father, mother, friends—all! How sweet and how powerful is first love!”
Kate Crossley had often been heard to say, that whenever she married, there would be an elopement. She either had a presentiment that such would be her fate, or she so despised the modern, unromantic fashion of marrying and giving in marriage, that she was resolved that it should be. Consequently, when the elegant Augustus Nob, on the first day of May, 1842, knelt before her in the most fashionable manner, and made a most fashionable declaration, quite confident of being accepted—who could have refused. He was accepted, with the proviso that it should be an elopement.
“All right!” soliloquized Augustus, as he closed the hall-door behind him; “all right, and very simple! old lady decidedly in my favwaw—reconciliation easy—carriage and four—private clergy—two days in a hotel—sent for, and all right again—simple, vewy simple, and vewy romantic, too!”
It was a dark night—a very dark night for the month of May—and a very cold one, too; and under the shadow of some trees that grew upon the side-walk in the upper part of Chestnut street, making the spot still darker, might be seen an elegant carriage and horses drawn close up to the curbstone.